OBITUARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 138, 13 June 1929, Page 3

OBITUARY.

PASSING OF A PIONEER.

MRS. P. M. KEEGAN, OF AKAROA

One of Canterbury's early .pionoers passed away at Auckland on Monday in the person of Mrs. P. Keegan. The late Mrs. Keegan was born in the Vale of Avoca, County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1549, coming to New Zealand with other members of her famiy at an early age when the Canterbury settlement was being founded. All the hardships of early settfement were experienced.. She married the late Mr. Patrick Martin Keegan, an East Indian veteran, who had; taken up a bush section at Akaroa;■_•;• -Here pioneering began in earnest. Hard work, isolation and no roads, the necessities of life almost unprocurable, and farm products almost unsaleable. In spite; of these drawbacks the old Akaroa-pioneers were happy, and made good and'reared large families. The late Mrs. Keegan had a family of twelve, eight'of Whom survive, together with numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren/ quite a number having settled in Auckland. Some time ago she came to Auckland'on a visit to her daughter, Mrs. Hallam, *of Eden Terrace. ....... A large number of descendents -of-the old Akaroa pioneers now residing ;in Auckland assembled at the grareside.in the Waikumete Cemetery to pay a last tribute to an old settler whose hands were never idle. So far as can be.learned there are now only two left out.of all the early pioneers who had 'been attracted to beautiful Akaroa in the very early days, and who worked so hard-to reclaim it from a stae of nature.'

MR. WILLIAM RICHARDSON. - The death occurred on June 10 of a well-known resident of Ohakune, Mr. William Richardson. He was born in Dunedin in 1862, and came to- Wangamii at an early age. He spent . sobie years with the Public Works Survey Department, and later he took up farming on the Turakina River, :In 1902 he purchased a farm near Raetihi, upon which he lived till he retired in 1919 to Ohakune. Mr. Richardson was for many years a member of the Waimarino County Council, and for .two terms a member of the Ohakune Borough Council, He was a very keen bowler, and had been president of the Ohakune Club for the past two seasons. Mr. Richardson is survived by a widow, two sons and two daughters, Mr. Clifford Richardson, of Ohakune, and Mr. Jack Richardson, of Hawke's Bay, and Mrs. Meehan, of Taihape. and Mrs. L. Kerr, Long Bay, Sydney.